Acronym

For those of you in the United States, have a great holiday weekend! Here's some reading material to take with you:

Jamie Notter challenges associations to try for truth.

Bruce Hammond shares his experience on "the other side"--as a volunteer--and the lessons he sees for associations.

Tony Rossell is hosting an interesting discussion on incentives and membership recruitment. Elsewhere, Ellen Behrens at the aLearning blog is also thinking about incentives and how to make them effective.

Ann Oliveri at the Zen of Associations blog has some ideas about how to better engage association employees.

Rebecca Rolfes at the LeaderConnect blog asks whether trade associations can be truly global.

NTEN's blog lists 10 disruptive technologies your organization should be thinking about.

Michele Martin has a helpful post on making social media and learning more accessible to people with disabilities.

Peggy Hoffman shares an interesting picture of how a for-profit company is interacting with and engaging its customer community.

Harvard Business's Conversation Starter blog has a recent post on three ways to make conferences better. It's interesting to see what someone outside the association field sees as radical suggestions to improve conferences and meetings.

Here's an idea you can easily apply in your work: the Signal vs. Noise blog suggests that changing your writing instrument might help you focus on the big picture.

It's hard to take criticism--I'll be the first to admit it. Just recently, my predecessor (and fellow blogger) Scott Briscoe and I sat down to talk about a recent issue of Associations Now, so that he could give me some honest feedback about what he liked and didn't like (at my request). It was really generous of him to share his time and thoughts with me--but it was also really difficult to sit and listen about the many ways that issue fell short of my ideal.

I've been thinking about criticism lately, because I've been seeing organizations wrestle with how to handle it when they're criticized in a public space. Most recently I read with interest a blog post by Mark Athitakis, one of my colleagues on the magazine, about a well-known author's response to a negative review of her most recent book. Let's just say she didn't take the criticism well.

I don't know that I have a Grand Unification Theory of how to handle criticism, but I do think one thing is key: Don't get defensive. As painful as criticism may be, and as wrong-headed as you may feel it is, if you get defensive, it comes across--and it comes across poorly.

Defensiveness also effectively prevents you from gleaning whatever lessons the criticism may offer. Maybe the critic just doesn't understand your association's new service offering--but clearly you should take a look at your communications efforts if the purpose of your new service is unclear. Maybe the critic just wasn't the right person for that format of education--but clearly you should look at ways to make other options or learning formats available.

And in the end, if you find yourself about to fire off a defensive email, blog comment, or Twitter rant, remind yourself that your critic is actually giving you a gift--the gift of time and brainpower. Even if you just don't agree with the criticism, the opportunity to engage with someone who's willing to take the time to share thoughts about your association, event, product, or service is worthwhile.

I had an interesting conversation about marketing new professional codes of conduct or professional principles Wednesday with Carol Smolenski, executive director of ECPAT-USA, a New York-based nonprofit that protects children from sex tourism. It was one more time in which I felt that America’s propensity to sue everyone in sight – or live in fear of that—was holding back good-minded organizations from doing the right and obvious thing.

In this case, I’m talking about ECPAT’s Code of Conduct for the Protection of Children from Sexual Exploitation in Travel and Tourism. This is a concisely written code with six anti-“sexploitation” criteria and more than 1,000 signatories from 30 countries to date.

How many of those 1,000 signatory organizations—ranging from hotel chains to hospitality and travel associations--are U.S.-based? Four.

Why so shockingly low? Lawyers, grimaces Carol. Apparently, although this view “is not generally shared” outside of the States, many lawyers here believe that displaying support for the code would put a company/association at greater risk should a sexually exploited child decide to hire a lawyer and target, not so much the individual committing the heinous crime, but the facility in which it occurred because “it is likely more profitable.”

Fortunately, not everyone in America agrees. The American Society of Travel Agents is to be commended for adding its considerable clout to the effort to stem sex trade of minors, as is longtime hospitality industry leader Marilyn Carlson Nelson, who immediately signed up her powerful Carlson Companies in 2004 despite internal advice to the contrary. Today, she remains an ardent champion for the code and cause.

Carol, too, remains committed, although she now focuses on marketing the code primarily beyond American borders, where interest and support are much higher. In Mexico and Belize, for instance, the code has firm backing from a variety of travel associations, which also help get EPCAT supporters and staff into the door of local hotels. There, Carol finds that facility managers are often eager to sign the code, despite hesitations from corporate headquarters.

To help bolster these potential grassroots supporters, her organization is trying something new: on-the-street surveys asking whether people would prefer to stay in a place supportive of responsible tourism-related policies. Although early yet, to date around 60% of several hundred surveyed in New York City say yes.

But it’s a bit of a shame both that this is the question EPCAT has chosen to ask first, and that its initial query is to the general public. To me, it’s asking the wrong people. I’d rather target travel and hospitality professionals, owners, managers, promoters and maybe even their lawyers with the question, “How would you feel about staying in a place that does not support responsible tourism practices and policies?”

This month's Associations Now case study looks at a situation that seems to be more common this year, for obvious reasons: An association has a long-standing relationship with a major sponsor. Unexpectedly, the sponsor tells the association it has to cut its level of sponsorship significantly--a scenario with major budget implications for the association. What should a CEO in this position do?

Thanks are due in particular to David Patt, CAE, who co-authored this month's case study and consistently helped to ground the article by providing his perspective on what a real CEO would think and do when faced with similar circumstances. Thanks also to Scott Oser and Oliver Yandle, who provided no-holds-barred commentary.

What do you think of the situation presented in this month's case study (available online here)? Did you agree or disagree with the commentators? If you were suddenly faced with the loss of a significant part of your association's sponsorship revenue, how would you respond?

With so much bad economic news around, it’s especially wonderful when you see an organization staying laser-focused on its mission and, in fact, searching for greater opportunities to impact both their members and the world.

Such is the case with news that Kiwanis International is seeking a major new challenge and wants input on what it should be. In addition to tapping its 8,000 clubs in 70 nations, Kiwanis is inviting any organization and individual to propose a project “to become the global service organization’s second worldwide service initiative” to “make a positive difference in the world by helping children in need.” The request comes because Kiwanis has nearly succeeded in accomplishing its first global challenge: protecting children from iodine deficiency disorders. Working with partner UNICEF since 1994, the organization estimates “the number of households consuming iodized salt has jumped from 20% in 1990 to more than 70% today.”

Proposals for the new worldwide service challenge are due by Oct. 1, 2009. For a list of project criteria and more information, visit www.kiwanis.org/wsp. Kiwanis will announce its final choice in June 2010 during 95th annual convention.

Business schools, law schools and management classes of all kinds spend a great deal of time and effort teaching us how to get what we want through a variety of what I would call “hard” management tools and techniques. They are “hard” like a tool of any kind is hard. You do this, and this is the result you can expect….. This approach is a black and white world that aggressively seeks to stamp out gray areas.

But what about the very best managers…the ones who inspire us to do better than we thought we ever could? You know the ones…the ones we would do our utmost to please, the ones that make coming to work an absolute pleasure--a humanly and professionally rewarding experience. Hopefully all of us have had the experience of working with or for someone like that at least once in our lives.

You can feel it in the atmosphere of the organizations that are run by such people. It is refreshing, energizing and inspiring. Some small organizations of a few employees have this; but so do some large, multinational organizations. What characterizes such places? Here are some thoughts, please feel free to add!

- They are attuned to the markets they serve—in fact they are so attuned they are sometimes seen as trend setters. They are what others want to be.

- The managers of such organizations walk the talk. And what’s more, they somehow attract and create other managers just like themselves. The whole place takes on their personality!

- A person’s word is their bond in such organizations. If you say you are going to do something, everyone knows you will—or die trying.

- They are high energy places that stimulate creative thinking. They are FUN places to work.

Let’s face it, many of us sort of fell into association management. Not to detract from our profession, but I remember wanting to be a Marine Biologist, not an Assistant Executive Director, when I was 8. I fell into association management because I am well-rounded, am personable, and like the idea of working for a cause greater than simple profit from making widgets. I have had some success in my work also because I’ve learned the difference between ‘sales’ and ‘support’, and why, in associations, the “support” model takes you much further.

Let’s start with definitions (from dictionary.com):

Sale: The exchange of goods or services for an amount of money or its equivalent.

Support: To maintain by supplying with things necessary to existence.

Here are some tips on how to implement supporting your members, exhibitors, sponsors, volunteers, and even your staff:

Ask One Question: How can I (we) support you? It sounds so nice, and it actually means something.

Focus on those you can support, not those you have to sell: Driving revenue is our goal, and I’m not saying that you should turn away money that walks through the door. What I am saying is that you should focus on the core group of people and companies who you can support, and cultivate those relationships to be mutually beneficial, symbiotic ones.

Support = Following Up: Adapt to their modes of communication, but make sure you do follow up with them. A short email or note, a quick phone call, that makes the difference.

Ask Questions: You can’t support if you don’t know anything about them. You can learn all the superficial facts on a website, and plug a few lines into your pitch, but you still don’t know the person, or the company, you only know what they do. Find out what they love, and what they hate, and what they are passionate about. And take good notes.

Meet Them Where They Are: We are all in different places, and you’ll get an instant impression from them, whether they are bored, in a hurry, engaged in your conversation, etc. If they are very detailed, than supporting them means providing many details. If they shoot from the hip, than so do you!

Here are some other examples of Sales vs. Support:

Sales is trying to make someone pay for some kind of ketchup Popsicle with, um, gloves on? Support is finding out what their favorite condiment is, and handing them a cheeseburger slathered in it, with a napkin and a nice little wet nap.

Sales is making loud jokes, talking a lot, and generally acting like you know everything. Support is facilitating, encouraging, and listening.

Sales is a fake personality making a standard pitch. Support is your real self (polished nicely), meeting a specific need for a specific client.

Sales is a method and a tool, and useful in many situations. Support is a paradigm that you use to approach all your interactions with people who support you.

Last week, I attended a golf outing sponsored by one of my Association’s five regions (chapters/components). Including travel time, the event lasted a majority of the day and prevented me from spending an eight-hour workday in the office.

My duties on-site primarily included networking with members. The question, however, is whether member relations is a core association service or if spending an eight-hour workday in the office would have been a better use of my time?

We have a small staff and I wear many hats, including that of member retention, outreach and engagement. Although to some – including a handful of coworkers that spend less time out and about with members – it may seem that member relations is unnecessary fluff.

I mean, stepping back, it is quite easy to see how one full workday spent out of the office during a beautiful, summer day could be confused with playing hooky; however, I believe that showing an interest in our members, attending regional events, networking with key stakeholders and remaining visible is paramount to active, engaged and happy members.

Like marketing, member relations is sometimes the first service to be trimmed from an association’s budget during tough economic times; however, I believe that staying connected to members allows associations like mine to gather and utilize valuable intelligence.

Attending this golf outing allowed me to network with members, informally question them about satisfaction with a variety of Association products/services, demonstrate progress on current initiatives, identify current member challenges and the list goes on.

So, my question to you is this: Do you believe “member relations” is a core association service? What does member relations look like in your association? In what ways does your association leverage member intelligence?

Happy Friday!

George Siemens at the elearnspace blog links to an article on designing education in the "new economy of attention" that could inform some of the discussions happening in associations about Twittering and texting during conferences. In a related post, he announces a new project on social media trends and their implications for learning that sounds like it could be interesting.

Elizabeth Weaver Engel at the Thanks for Playing blog posted some food for thought on simplicity, inspired by engineering principles.

Deidre Reid at the Reid All About It blog has some in-depth thoughts on authenticity, what it looks like, and what it is.

I love this: The Association Rat blog suggests that everyone develop a "bucket list" of what you want to accomplish during your time in any given job.

Elsewhere, Wes Trochlil talks about some of the ways things we now have in abundance are creating new scarcities.

Jamie Notter tells us that leadership is not comfortable, and why it's important to accept that.

The Digital Now blog wonders about the cost of free lunch.

Some interesting social media case studies: Lee Aase talks about what they're doing at the Mayo Clinic, Mark Buzan describes a nonprofit's successful viral video campaign, and Rohit Bhargava analyzes a recent online scavenger hunt held by Virgin America.

Offering another perspective on the future of learning for associations is Jeffrey Cufaude, a former association executive director and now president and CEO of Idea Architects, where (among other areas of expertise) he facilitates and designs conferences, workshops, and other learning opportunities. Jeffrey also blogs at the Idea Architects blog, where he’s currently writing a great series of posts about developing powerful presentations.

Here’s some of the many great things Jeffrey had to say about where associations are with regard to learning, and where we need to go.

I’ve heard you talk lately about issues related to diversity in association learning events. What should associations be doing to hold themselves accountable for greater diversity and inclusion in their learning programs?

I think you can start with the presenters. I think associations have an obligation to be doing due diligence about what messages they send based on the presenters that they are selecting.

I'm not saying that there should be a particular message, but if we believe and we value inclusiveness and top quality education and a whole host of other things, those then should be lenses by which we filter the choices we're making about our presenters, particularly the people who get the biggest platforms.

It would be rare for an association to bring in a political speaker or a person who has a political take on a topic without having thought about the consequences of only spotlighting one particular viewpoint. They may still choose to do it and say, no, we want this Democrat or this Republican's take on this issue. But they would have done this with deliberation and understand the consequences.

I don't think the same type of considerations are going on on other lenses. What does it mean if our three general session speakers are all 50-year-old white males? I'm not saying that's inherently bad. From my value system it is; from the association's standpoint it may not. But think about what that means in relation to the overall values of the organization.

I know, having been an education director and been around for long enough, how general session speakers are often selected. Who is the biggest name that people will get excited about listening to? And then secondly, when we get down into that plenary level, who will someone sponsor or who can we get for free?

That means our only criteria are those two core values. It's not looking at the broader set of core values. I don't think that's what people who are serious about learning should be doing.

And the consequence is that we continue to elevate the same voices and the same perspectives, and we create an echo chamber that those then become the voices and perspectives that people see because those are the ones that everyone's talking about.

What are some other things that you think associations need to be holding themselves accountable for with regard to learning?

The bulk of [conference] evaluation forms still primarily focus on satisfaction with the session. We're getting better. In my experience, maybe a quarter of those, up to a third, are getting into [questions like] “How relevant will this be for you in your workplace?” “I received ideas that I'm going to be able to use.”

But we're not even, in the basic level, asking questions that measure the effectiveness and the applicability of both the content and the format. We're still [asking] “this speaker was knowledgeable; AV and handouts were good.” I feel like we haven't even made the commitment to the baby step of holding ourselves accountable, let alone having a more sophisticated assessment mechanism to find out what actually was used.

To me that suggests that we're not really serious about ensuring that we're delivering education that is actually used back in the workplace.

What would it look like if we really were serious about that?

I think you’d see that as the finish line. Right now most associations and most directors of education see the finish line as the end of the event or the end of the webinar. I totally get that. But all we've really done is get people trained for the race; the real race is back there in the workplace.

I think there has to be an initial shift of thinking: We [know we] are successful three to six months afterwards, when people can tell us what percentage of the knowledge they used, what has worked for them, and what hasn't.

If you take that as a beginning mindset, you design things very differently from the very beginning. …

Why don't people ask what percentage of the session's content is going to be relevant to you in the work that you do? Why is that so hard to get that put onto an evaluation form? Sometimes we think about it being the meeting planner, focusing on logistics versus the director of education focusing on content. But I think that's too easy to blame the meeting planner.

If we're really serious about learning, why aren't we further along in this arena? That's the same thing I've been saying with diversity. If we were really serious about it, wouldn't things look different?

My bottom-line takeaway from that is we're not serious about learning. We're serious about delivering information, and that's not sustainable 10 to 20 years from now.

It’s been awhile since I’ve posted and it’s been due to an avalanche of professional demands that has consumed life in the past few months. Nearly all relate to the challenging climb that I’ve come to realize as the quality mountain. Like any ascent, there is more than one way to reach the top. And, like any attempt, slipping or falling is often just one misstep away. The goal is seemingly simple: Avoid the falls that can be fatal, and learn from the near-misses that can in fact make you wiser.

In my world, quality education occurs at the intersection of great people, curricula and infrastructure. Each part compliments the others, and if one fails the rest of the pieces fail as well. This interdependent relationship is nurtured by leadership, not just by senior management but by all involved. It’s critical that everyone feels the need to fulfill both the personal as well as organizational mission, to achieve the level of satisfaction that goes along with a job well done.

It’s a challenge to maintain the direction of heading toward quality. Day to day distractions and the pressure to achieve a middle ground consensus in difficult decision making efforts can take you off course, often without you even noticing it. You have to take time out, on a regular basis (daily, weekly, monthly) to consciously think about where the mission is going.

So, what are some key points I’ve picked up in the past few months?
- Stay focused. When I take my “quality time-outs” and consider where the challenges have been, and consider the final goal, I often come away feeling re-oriented to the original direction.
- Know your data! It’s not enough to just tabulate and collect information. It’s how it’s interpreted and applied that counts.
- Each quality climb begins with the first step. Absolutely corny, and absolutely true. Nothing is insurmountable when you look at it this way.
- Small falls are okay. I’ve learned a lot from the mistakes. We’ve learned a lot from our missteps. We’ve applied our lessons and have improved processes because of it.
- Stay true. What is the goal? Do the decisions you make contribute to the goal? Are you will to settle for less than what you originally wanted? Give yourself a chance to think about these questions, and commit yourself to the sometimes difficult choices you make in order to achieve your goal.

I have recently become aware of organizations (associations and for-profit organizations) reaching out to popular bloggers in their industries asking them to endorse/promote a product, service, or event. This has really got me wondering about morals and ethics and how social media plays into these two areas that are truly critical for an association to maintain.

Here is an almost actual example......The meetings department of the ABC Association is struggling to reach their attendance goals for their annual conference, despite several new features planned for the conference that should be of great value to their members. Their marketing budget was also cut, so they are thinking of creative ways to get people to attend. To really start some buzz and not spend a lot of money, the meetings marketing manager contacts several industry bloggers and personally asks them to post something about the conference on their blogs. Over the next couple of weeks information on the conference starts to show up on many of the blogs written by people the meetings manager has reached out to personally. The posts are very similar and nowhere does it say that the information was posted because the association reached out to the author and asked for it to be mentioned.

All I keep hearing is that one of the keys to being successful in social media is to be authentic and then your audience will spread your message for you. That means you need to be honest, truthful and ethical in what you do in these areas. To me what the association did in the example above flies right in the face of authenticity. I agree that it is a very smart marketing tactic but is getting an endorsement without a disclaimer saying the mention was requested really the best way to promote something? Isn't it slightly, if not completely, devious and underhanded? What would happen if word got out this was done? Would the reputations of both the meetings marketing manager and the bloggers be tarnished?

What is your opinion? Is this just good marketing or is it, for good reasons or not, something that should be reserved for other marketing mechanisms? Please reply with your thoughts or suggestions on how an organization could do something like this but still have full disclosure.

Last week, Steve Worth posted about the thorny issue of relevance--how associations can achieve relevance and maintain it over time. His post sparked several interesting comments, but I wanted to highlight one in particular, from Jamie Notter:

"Of course I understand the concept behind the importance of relevance, and maybe I'm just word-smithing here, but the word "relevant" bugs me (and I've been hearing it a lot lately). It feels like we're setting the bar too low. As Maddie Grant has said, having the goal of relevance is like living your life with the goal of being "not dead." Maybe Rebecca's comment about future-focused is part of it. Is relevant really enough?"

What do you think? Is it enough for associations to be relevant? If there is a higher bar we should aspire to, how would you describe it?

If others have thoughts on Jamie's question or Steve's original post, I'd love to hear them! The discussion is here.

When I was a staffer on Capitol Hill I recall hearing two different stories told quite often during debates on the Senate floor.

One was: There are three types of lies in the world—simple lies; damn lies; and then there are statistics!

The other was: As the Bible says, “Come let us reason together.” We all have our points of view on which we differ, but we should at least be able to agree on the facts—they are what they are. Facts are stubborn things….

Both assertions are true of course. No one needs a course in statistics to know that the gathering and presentation of facts is a serious matter and that a lot of pseudo-science underlies a lot of the “facts” we see cited in advertising that bombards us every day. But it is also true that no rational debate can occur and no sound decision can be made that is not founded on the facts. This is true in all cases and particularly true in board of director meetings—those groups of leaders made up of “type A” personalities, all of whom are quite certain they know the way forward…..

As association managers, we have all had to herd cats on occasion, haven’t we? In this, facts have a way of focusing attention in the right direction. Lacking this compass, we are faced with rule by the most dominant personality, the loudest voice, or the one most skilled in Machiavellian intrigue.

But what are these facts on which your organization makes its decisions? Are they what is true for your board of directors, according to their experience?--your membership, according to their needs and perceptions?—or are they what is true for the market at large? When they differ, which set of facts weigh most heavily on the scales for your organization?

E-mail marketing has never been so popular, thanks to the weak economy and increased use of the Internet by consumers and members. What stopped me cold as I skimmed a press release about a new report from Forrester Research Inc. was the company’s prediction that “in five years, consumers will be deluged with more than 9,000 email marketing messages annually.”

More broadly, the report predicts spending on e-mail marketing will jump by almost 11% annually to $2 billion by 2014.

But gosh, am I seriously going to have to delete or respond to 9,000 e-mail pitches a year? The vision of my graying self, hips wider than a boat from camping out in my desk chair trying to empty an in-box exploding with don’t-ya-want-it e-mails, is very depressing. Life is too short.

And that’s just the receiver’s viewpoint. What about us as the senders? Many associations are already taxed with complaints from members about sending them too many e-mails. How will we compete against 8,900-odd other messages?

“By 2014, direct marketers will waste $144 million on e-mails that never reach their primary target,” says Forrester Research Vice President and Principal Analyst David Daniels. “Successful direct marketing pros will alter their tactics to overcome inbox clutter and increase relevancy.”

So there’s the challenge. It’s not a new one, but now it seems more urgent than ever. Association marketers, not to mention the entire staff, must explore new ways to showcase our products and services through memorable, persuasive language and vehicles that make clear their true value.

And it’s not a one-step process. The Forrester report also predicts that so-called “retention emails”—those that consumers have agreed to receive—“will account for more than a one-third of all marketing messages in consumers’ inboxes by 2014, representing increased competition for marketers.” That means we have to first keep ourselves on the permissions list of our people and stop annoying them with e-blasts in which they have no stake or interest.

And we have to be more assertive about training our staffs in the art of using social media as a legitimate business tool. Several recent conversations I had with members reminded me how tentative our sector can be, even about piloting something such as a conference Twitter stream, a CEO blog, or an education session held in Second Life.

According to Daniels, “The use of e-mail in social networks will be one of the biggest challenges for direct marketers. Over the next five years, marketers must bridge the gap between social and traditional inboxes with social sharing tools.”

So let’s keep the conversation flowing about how to ensure that our members keep us on their “permissions” list for our marketing materials—and then act accordingly. Ideas?

In this century, more and more individuals are moving toward working part-time or full time from a remote location. This trend will continue, as we begin to integrate personal and business lives into a more cohesive, and perhaps even healthier, lifestyle. Associations are uniquely positioned to view this trend as an asset, not a liability.

Let’s not forget that productivity has nothing to do with proximity, it’s a function of culture, good management, and personality. If you are confident that the intersection of these three items at your association is strong, then read on!

Realizing remote staff as an asset will allow you to see the following opportunities:

Communication can be maintained, and in some ways enhanced, by distance. For example, two personalities who are extremely diverse may actually work better together if they have some distance, and communicate less in person and more via email/chat, or by phone. In-person meetings are still important and can be arranged based on proximity/need.

Use the remote location to further your interests. Is the remote employee on the other side of town closer to the printer that you use? Are they in a different state that allows them to travel to other industry events for less time/money?

Less interruption can lead to increased productivity. We are all constantly interrupted, and the office atmosphere is one of the most invasive spaces to work in many places. A remote worker at home may be able to schedule more interruption-free time.

Expect extended availability. It seems like a fair exchange that if a remote individual receives some serious bennies, like working in their pajamas, having a more flexible schedule and being able to save money on gas, that you can realistically ask and expect them to be more available for phone calls and other issues during non-business hours.

Managing traditional and non-traditional employees does pose some challenges. Some tips are:

Treat them differently. It’s okay to do this, because the goal is to re-align their job descriptions and duties with their remoteness; they are satellite offices, and should have different expectations than in-house staff.

Barter. Any staff member who works remotely will not be able to, for example, answer the phones constantly or do specific admin tasks; trade these out with other tasks that they can do from anywhere, for example asking them to update the website more often, etc. Being proactive and showing the in-house staff that they aren’t expected to double their workload may help alleviate any feelings of unfairness.

Accountability knows no bounds. Proper accountability, in the form of defining the task and responsibility, setting parameters, providing a small set of boundaries, and asking staff to report back, really does not have anything to do with distance. If you really think about it, there have been remote employees in many industries for decades, in the form of outside salesman. Now we just have more tools to make it easier.

Some links for weekend reading:

- David Gammel argues for benevolent dictatorships, at least when it comes to website design.

- Blue Avocado has an interesting article on the portrayal of nonprofits in popular culture, with a number of comments providing additional examples. (Although I can't think of many pop culture references to professional or trade associations. Can anyone else think of some?)

- Tony Rossell imagines what he'd do if he was building an entirely new membership marketing program from the ground up.

- The Nonprofit University blog talks about survival, sustainability, and the differences between the two.

- Frank Fortin was inspired by Jim Collins' new book.

- The Busy Event blog shares what your exhibitors, attendees, and sponsors are thinking--and not telling you.

- The Vanguard Technology blog has four reasons why mobile matters to associations.

- Jeff De Cagna has a podcast interview with Alan Webber, co-founding editor of Fast Company magazine and author of the new book Rules of Thumb: 52 Principles for Winning at Business Without Losing Your Self.

- Cindy Butts reminds us all to be kind.

- Ken Zielske at the Association Media blog asks if your association has a "whammy bar"--something really cool that sets it apart. (Clearly I don't know guitars, because all I could think about as I read the post was that 1980s game show where the contestants would yell "No whammies!")

- Peggy Hoffman asks, "What's the difference between social networks and communities?"

Free is an attractive word; it gets attention. But it can also be a dangerous word; one that should probably be avoided much more often than it is.

Researchers led by Michael A. Kamins (Stony Brook University-SUNY), recently published an academic article on the effects of bundling products together and calling one of them free. (You can access a press release or purchase the article here.) The basic findings: consumers devalue anything that is labeled free. They found that if you bundled two products together without using the word "free," then any devaluation is significantly less.

Something to think about as associations bundle products and services together as a revenue-generating tactic in a tough a economy.

This is part II of a two-part interview with June Cohen, executive producer of TED Media; part I is here.

What's fascinating about that is that the volunteers took two steps. Not only did they identify that the translation was problematic, they actually stepped in and said, “I'll fix it.”

Exactly. Yeah, and were eager to, happy to, almost insistent about it. "Let me fix this. You can't have this on the site." And so we learned both to trust in that and also not to underestimate the desire of people to be involved and a part of something greater than themselves. I think that's actually sort of a fundamental human need, and that's one of the things that crowdsourcing, overall, online delivers. It creates community and it offers purpose and reward, which are things that everyone needs.

Are there any trends or interesting demographic information that you’ve seen in the project?

In the first three weeks, 2,500 translators volunteered, of which I think there are around 800 currently working on translations. There's like 1,500 translations in motion in 56 languages. The major thing I've learned in watching what talks have been translated into different languages is that I never could have predicted the talks that are chosen. If we had tried in a top-down way to decide which talks get translated into each language, there's no way that we would have guessed correctly, partially because so much of it is personal preference.

For example, we have maybe ten talks that have been translated into Farsi, or Persian. And among them are included Helen Fisher's talk on why we love and why we cheat, Richard Dawkins’ talk on militant atheism. And those are pretty interesting and controversial topics to be introducing to an Iranian audience. Now, of course, along with those are other ones which are not controversial at all, things like Ken Robinson on creativity and education, or Liz Gilbert on cultivating genius. But I find those kind of controversial examples just interesting and interesting to watch.

It seems like this has the potential to be transformative in how the meetings themselves are held. Does it make TED think maybe it can get non-English-speaking presenters integrated into the conference more?

Currently, we do think that in the next year we will likely have at least one speaker at a TED event that is speaking in another language and translated simultaneously. But we don't think that this will be a strong direction for us. We still believe that sitting in an audience through a speaker talking in another language, whether it's with supertitles or with a translator, is a bit tedious. It's actually a little bit hard to sit through in the room. Also, we think it's really important for the conversation at a conference to be in one language, to have a kind of coherent experience that can be shared.

But we have a new program that's not completely rolled out yet, called TED X, which allows people around the world to license the product's name and hold small, independent TED events in their own area. So we have a TED X Tokyo and a TED X San Francisco and a TED X UCS at the University of Southern California. It's a slightly different brand but a TED event that has at least 50 percent TED content, recorded TED talks, and then 50 percent live speakers. What this allows us to do over time is find some of the best speakers in other languages—capture those talks at events in that language and then put them up on the TED website with English subtitles. I personally would love to see some of the best speakers around the world who don't speak English and who I wouldn’t otherwise have access to.

It seems like what you're telling me is that you really still can't sacrifice the personal interactive experience that the people actually onsite are having at the event.

Right. Exactly. We are constantly trying to balance preserving the integrity of an intimate live event that works with the people in the room with the creation of talks that will have a much longer life online and many, many orders of magnitude more of people online. The conference itself, the live event, is still the nucleus. It's the absolute center of what we do. And we just can't sacrifice anything there. The event has shifted actually since we've started putting the talks online and since we've gained such a large online presence, but we've been extremely careful about preserving the quality and integrity of that experience, even as we started to begin having five cameras in the room and professional lighting and professional staging.

If you haven’t heard of the TED Conference, TED stands for “Technology, Entertainment, Design”—and originally, the conference was intended to bring people from those three worlds together. Today, TED has evolved into a small, invitation only conference with a global following online. More than 400 of the conference’s TEDTalks, 18-minute presentations by people from Seth Godin to Jane Goodall, are available online. These videos are released under a Creative Commons license, so they can be freely shared and reposted.

Last month TED.com launched its Open Translation Project, which invites viewers to translate the talks into various languages. The effort has already been a remarkable success, and June Cohen, executive producer of TED Media, spoke with Mark Athitakis (senior editor of Associations Now, who kindly contributed this post to Acronym) about its evolution into a crowdsourced project, how to channel users’ enthusiasm, and how crowdsourcing has sparked future projects.

What inspired TED to begin translating its talks?

We launched TEDTalks online nearly three years ago, and pretty much as soon as we put TEDTalks out to the world we started to have people ask us to translate them. People were asking us to translate them into other languages, but actually more frequently people were offering to translate them. We would get at least one or two offers a month of somebody saying, “I've translated Ken Robinson’s talk into Polish." They would say, "Well, we did this translation. Do you want it?" But we didn't know what to do with them. We didn't have a system for dealing with them.

So we knew pretty early on that there was a lot of demand and, more interestingly, that there were people who were kind of clamoring to translate for us. So we began thinking about the project at least two years ago. And we committed to it around a year and a half ago. It's been a very long time in development. As we've discovered more and more, it was just an extremely complicated project to create an architecture for what we wanted to do.

Was crowdsourcing always part of the plan? You had people who were willing to volunteer translations, but was it always designed to open the doors to let people contribute?

Yes and no. Crowdsourcing was always going to be a component of it because we knew from the beginning that there were volunteers who were interested and motivated. But initially and for a very long time, I believed that the crux of the project would be based on professional translation, because we take very seriously the task of faithfully translating our speakers' words. For some time I really believed that professional translation was the only way that you could guarantee that kind of quality. I also thought that by having professional translation it would set the bar at the proper level. It would provide an example to the volunteers of the kinds of quality we were shooting for.

I do think in every volunteer project it's important to set examples. But it turns out a lot of my assumptions were wrong. Around six months ago we shifted from a project that was going to emphasize professional translation with some crowdsourced translation, to one that was entirely focused on crowdsourced translation but was seeded with a small amount of professional translation.

I can give a great example of why we've come to really trust in the idea of crowdsourcing. As we were about to launch the site it turned out that one [translator] actually submitted to us a small amount of work that was machine-translated. And within two hours of opening up our site, just our beta site to just our translators, we had three different volunteer translators come to us and say, “There's a problem with this translation—it seems to have been machine-translated. But just give it to me, I'll fix it.”

So we had these errors that were introduced because of a rare, dishonest translation vendor who had submitted to us machine-translated work. And within hours it was identified and corrected by volunteer translators. That really turned on its head everything I thought going in about the roles of volunteers versus professional translators. I really thought that in all cases the professional translators would be leading the way in terms of the quality.

(See part II of this interview for more, including a glimpse of TED’s new “TED X” program.)